


Under Cloudless Infinities

by songlin



Series: What Comes Undone [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/M, Fluff, Genderbending, Genderswap, Great Hiatus, Kid Fic, Parenthood, Post Reichenbach, Reunions, girl!Jim, girl!Moran, girl!sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-21
Updated: 2012-02-24
Packaged: 2017-10-31 13:33:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/344593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songlin/pseuds/songlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One morning, John woke up and felt--no, knew, the way he knew he loved his daughter, the way some people believe in God--that Sherlock was alive, and that she was coming home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Wounds Won't Close

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You need an assistant." "No, I need assistance."

_I’m not dead. Let’s have dinner. SH_

_The Woman: Clever you._

_The Woman: Rubbish skip?_

_The Woman: Isn’t someone missing you?_

_The Woman: Tease._

_I never tease. The hotel in Nice. SH_

_The Woman: I’ll be there with bells on._

\---

_I need their names._

_You know I can’t. MH_

_You don’t want me getting them myself._

_I mean it. MH_

_John misses you. MH_

_Don’t._

_The usual spot. MH_

_http://www.johnwatsonblog.co.uk/img/  
big-grin.jpg (photo of a baby girl about  
nine or ten weeks old, looking at the  
camera and smiling.  
John posted this on the blog yesterday.  
Thought you might want to see. MH_

\---

What made the hotel room in Nice so very desirable was that it had no windows. Additionally, the whole bed and breakfast was owned by an astonishingly well-connected elderly woman who owed Sherlock rather a lot of favors. It had presented itself as the natural option for a place in which to hide a fugitive dominatrix who knew too much.

The woman had a key for her at the front desk. _“Mlle. Norton dit que vous envoyez vers le haut.”_

_“Merci.”_

She found Irene sitting on one of two cozy chairs in the room sporting a red sundress and a stunning tan. She crooked an eyebrow and tapped her finger against her chin, looking Sherlock over.

“Nice. Ginger suits you. Can’t say how I feel about the cut, though. It’s fetching, to be sure, but a girl did like to imagine untying that braid of yours and running her fingers through that hair.”

“Present circumstances.” Sherlock smiled thinly. “Enjoying the quiet life?”

She grimaced. “Surviving it.”

Sherlock smirked. “Aren’t we all.”

Irene gestured towards the chair across from her. “Please, take a seat.”

Squinting suspiciously, Sherlock did so, crossing her legs at the knee. “Wasn’t a rubbish skip.”

“Oh?”

“Lorry. Morgue corpse decoy. Distracted John; I got into place. Used the rubber ball trick.”

“Ah,” she breathed. “Clever girl indeed.”

“That’s over with then. You know why I’ve come.”

“Of course. You need a new assistant.”

“Wrong. I need _assistance._ There’s a difference.”

“What? Hunt down the nasty people who hunted you?” Irene narrowed her eyes. “No, not your style. Oh.” Her expression softened. “That’s how they got you.”

Sherlock’s lips tightened. “I have the names of his people. I need them gone. You know your way around them. As long as they are breathing, I am dead, and that is not a state of being I am willing to remain in for long.”

Irene grinned. “That makes two of us.”

Sherlock did not smile. She merely leaned forward.

“We start at the bottom.”

\---

John kept up with the blog. As the months passed, the tales of danger and mystery and excitement were eclipsed by baby pictures and videos of Rosie crawling, climbing, standing, taking her first wobbly steps. She was very entertained by the sounds made by ripping paper and banging pots.

Molly stopped by a few times a week and often babysat to give Mrs. Hudson a break. Rosie _adored_ her. John swore she could tell it was Molly at the door by the sounds she made on the stair. Every time she heard footsteps in the hall, Rosie would sit back, perk up, and look eagerly at John. If he said Molly’s name, Rosie would immediately shriek with glee and start bouncing up and down. Molly thought it was too precious for words and taped it twice.

Lestrade visited too, mostly during his suspension. Rosie seemed to think Lestrade was funny. She got into a habit of handing him things (toys, crackers, silverware, the remote control), waiting for him to give them back, throwing them on the floor, and laughing delightedly when he picked them back up again. He sometimes brought along his youngest daughter, Jo, who was three and fancied herself rather a Big Girl. Rosie was surprisingly cooperative with Jo’s bossing about. It gave John hope that perhaps he didn’t have a tiny Holmes on his hands, with all the accompanying orneriness.

Even Mycroft stopped by with surprising regularity. Rosie seemed to sense that he was not a person for playing with, and settled for plopping herself down and observing him with her bright green eyes. Eventually, she took to feeling him out by crawling over, leaving toys in front of him, crawling away and sitting back to observe his reactions. Finally, one day, while John was fixing a bottle in the kitchen, Mycroft actually picked up one of Rosie’s “gifts.” On that particular occasion, it was a copy of “The Little Prince” in French. His hand had barely closed around it before Rosie had scooted over next to him at top speed, pointed at the book and started whining expectantly. Mycroft, in a state of mild panic, opened the book up and started reading. Rosie quieted, pleased.

After that, every time he visited Rosie presented him with the same book and cried until he read it. John fully realized that giving Rosie her way when she threw fits was a dreadful idea, but he didn’t have the heart to stop it. The hilarity of watching Mycroft Holmes be tamed by a screeching baby girl was beside the point.

Of all of his regular visitors, it was Molly that John appreciated most, surprisingly enough. She was good with Rosie and never wanted to talk about Sherlock. The news coverage alone had taken a month to blow over. After dealing with all of that, going back to his therapist, firing his therapist and having a massive falling-out with Harry, John simply wanted to put everything that had happened in a box and hide it away.

So naturally he had quite a start when Mary Morstan, the woman from the Tilly Briggs case, showed up at his door one afternoon.

“Er, hello,” he said, kicking a rattle behind the door and out of sight. “Erm, Mary, right?”

Mary smiled. “You remember.”

“Of course! Come--come on in, the baby’s napping upstairs.”

He held the door open. She stepped inside and paused in the foyer, looking about. In her street clothes she was still very pretty, but more naturally so. She twisted her hands together, eyes flicking about nervously. “I--I probably could have emailed your or something, but I wanted--I thought--I’ve been following everything in the papers, and I--I just wanted to say--I think it was all bollocks.”

“You really don’t need--”

“I’m not the only one, either,” she said in a rush, cutting him off. “There are loads of us. People she helped mostly, a few she put in jail even. People who believe.” She brushed a curl of hair back behind her ear, blushing. “I’m sorry, I--that’s not what I came here to say really. I just wanted to say--thank you. And I believe.”

Mary stood there for a moment, squirming nervously, before leaning forward and giving John a quick peck on the cheek. He was so stunned he didn’t even think to move away, and before he could say anything she was gone.

John saw the obituary in the paper a week later. It was sad, but not entirely surprising, he found. As a doctor he’d spent a lot of time around dying people, and he knew what they looked and acted like. What _did_ surprise him was the letter published alongside the brief summary of her life.

_My name is Mary Morstan, and I am about to die. But that’s not important really. Lots of people die every day. Not everyone does something before they do._

_Three years ago, I was blackmailed into prostitution. I was told that if I did not sell myself for money, they would accuse my mother of sleeping with one of her university students. They had the resources, they told me, and I didn’t doubt them. What choice did I have? I accepted._

_It might have been months, years before I got out on my own. As it turned out, if not for the work of one woman I would have_ died _, along with all the other women who were press-ganged into sex work. All thirty-three of us, burned to death._

_But someone rescued us. In less than twenty-four hours she discovered the operation, tracked it down, infiltrated it and rescued us, all at great personal risk and for no reward. That someone was Sherlock Holmes._

_I know what you’ve read about her, but hear me out. I met Sherlock Holmes only briefly, but in those brief moments she saved my life and the lives of countless others. I saw her do it with my own eyes. You can’t stage that. No one could._

_We none of us are qualified to pass judgment on Sherlock Holmes as a person. We don’t have the evidence. But that we have as a culture turned our backs on a woman who did so much good for so many people is positively despicable. I don’t believe it. She saved too many people. She saved me._

_My name is Mary Morstan, and I believe in Sherlock Holmes._

John cut out the article and taped it to the fridge.

Not long afterwards, the notes started turning up. Pinned to the door of 221B, slipped through the mail slot, left on the welcome mat. Comments on his blog. _Don’t Give Up On Her! We Believe! Moriarty Was Real!_

He started seeing the same phrases spray-painted on tube walls and bus stations and rubbish bins all over London. _Believe In Sherlock! Richards Was A Fraud! Watson’s Warriors! This Woman Was Not A Fake!_ And eventually, _Sherlock Lives! Find Sherlock! She’s Alive!_

When John Googled a few of the phrases, he was completely floored. It was more than just a few comments on his blog. There were websites, a Twitter hashtag, photos of kids in deerstalker hats leaving Post-It notes around their schools, reports of “sightings,” conspiracy theories about why she had done it and how and where she had gone. There were more newspaper articles. Lestrade was reinstated after a public outcry. John posted Mary’s letter to his site and the server crashed within an hour.

Throughout all of it John found himself warmed by the belief but not willing to buy into their determination that Sherlock had somehow faked her death. He’d seen her fall. He’d _buried_ her, and he’d moved on.

But as he kept reading, scrolling through the forums and the emails, bits and pieces began to ring vaguely true. _“Moriarty must have threatened her.” “Maybe she was at gunpoint.” “OMG, what if she had JOHN at gunpoint? OR THE BABY. GOD.”_ And gradually, everything coalesced.

One morning, John woke up and felt--no, _knew,_ the way he knew he loved his daughter, the way some people believe in God--that Sherlock was alive, and that someday she was coming home.

\---

Some of Moriarty’s people needed to live in order to testify. Sherlock didn’t like that so much, having to level her powers against them before chasing them into police offices to watch dull, governmental justice be meted out to them. Thankfully, some of them weren’t so clever. Some of them left a paper trail. Some of them didn’t need to live.

July they spent in Aswan drawing out a brilliant con artist. Sherlock and Irene posed as an archaeological research duo searching for a specific Mesopotamian idol that had been lost in the storming of Bin Laden’s palace. There was a hefty reward offered. In the end their con man wound up with his legs crushed under a very convincing duplicate he’d tried to foist off on them and the promise of worse to come if he was not _very_ cooperative with the Egyptian police.

In August they were in Chicago tracking a world-renowned counterfeiter, which was a great deal more fun. Irene was charged with distracting their mark, which she was very good at, while Sherlock did a very clever bit of burgling.

September was quiet. September was when Sherlock picked up smoking again and Irene almost got them both killed when she attended a White House dinner wearing glasses and a wig as disguise. They tried to avoid Septembers.

October through March they were in Vladivostok after a team of ex-KGB agents turned assassin. Sherlock set fire to their headquarters a few minutes before Irene had quite finished escaping, but she was well clear by the time the gasoline caught, so that was alright.

“You keep saying you’d die for a bit of warmth,” Sherlock said mildly when Irene had slapped her across the face and very calmly informed her that if she lit her on fire again, she would lash her til she bled.

April and May was the hacker who’d found the families the Tilly Briggs recruited from. There was less call for Irene’s help on that particular case, and she spent most of it bored.

When Sherlock was bored, it meant the destruction of furniture, the chain-smoking of Parliaments, and the frightening of hapless bellhops. Irene’s boredom tended to manifest in the seduction of beautiful young honeymooning brides with rich and powerful husbands they didn’t love. Failing that, she flirted with Sherlock.

Sherlock generally ignored it until Irene moved on to something or someone else, unless she needed to snap at her to drive the point home. Irene was useful and very interesting to boot, and Sherlock knew the flirting was only to test Sherlock’s boundaries and her own abilities. It was sexual, but sex was not the point. They were Irene’s version of games, her version of Sherlock’s experiments.

What Sherlock could barely stand were the nights when Irene was restless to the point of cruelty. Sherlock in such a mood would have sharpened her deductive reasoning skills on Mrs. Hudson. Irene preferred to turn her particular skills towards her only available subject. The sensation of Irene Adler peeling back layers of your skin and crawling inside of your head was uncomfortable. It stung like a burr caught in your sock, scratching your ankle.

“Today’s the nineteenth,” said Irene, stretching out on her bed in their room in Cardiff. She was dressed in a nightshirt fresh from the closet of a Columbian drug lord’s daughter.

Sherlock was frowning at her computer screen. “Oh, have you learned to read the calendar now?”

“Don’t pretend with me, darling, you know it won’t work. Did you spend the whole time I was gone on John’s blog? Did he put up a video? Little Rosie with her birthday cake?”

Sherlock’s jaw tightened.

“Was there a party? I’ll wager there was. Invited all the old crowd.”

Sherlock hit the return key on her laptop with a bit more vehemence than was strictly necessary.

“Did he mention you at all, or has he moved on?”

“Piss off,” Sherlock snarled, still faced away.

“Did you ever tell him?”

_Don’t bite._ “Piss. Off.”

“That they told you you’d never have children.”

There was silence apart from the clacking of the keys as Sherlock typed.

“Wasn’t relevant,” she said evenly after a long time.

Irene laid back on her bed, pillowing her head in her arms. “I don’t blame you for not telling him. Men get so strange when they find that out about a woman, especially when they’re in love. And you’re not an object of pity.”

“It hardly mattered. Neither of us expressed a desire to reproduce and when I did become pregnant the point obviously became moot.”

Irene laughed softly and shook her head. “And you thought I was surprising.”

Sherlock smoked an entire pack of cigarettes that night.

It was another four months before they closed in on the final piece, the last of Moriarty’s team. They were eager to catch her, Sherlock in particular. Eager to go home, and she obliged them by making her hideout smack in the middle of London.

They were so eager, in fact, that they never realized they were not pursuing Sabrina Moran. She was _luring_ them.

\---

Sabrina Moran was a very angry woman.

She had been issued a dishonorable discharge after a year and a half overseas following an incident with a pretty young Pashtun girl. She was never brought up on charges, but that was that. Years of sniper training, and now she was expected to simply melt back into civilian life.

Luckily, Jayme Moriarty found her.

Jayme gave her work. It was interesting work, varied, exciting and perfectly suited to Sabrina’s unique set of skills. Beyond that, Jayme and Sabrina almost liked each other, as much as people of their ilk liked anyone. Sabrina enjoyed Jayme’s sense of enterprise, and Jayme enjoyed Sabrina’s finely honed hunting instincts. They both enjoyed the delicious, sharp undercurrent of sexual tension that ran between them, hot, bitter and unfulfilled. It was better that way. They were hunters, not lovers. It wasn’t that they were attracted to one another. Rather, they sensed the potential for a fight. Sabrina and Jayme were big game, apex predators, circling one another and dancing around the electric snap of conflict without ever touching. It was thrilling. Dangerous. Delicious.

Then Jayme had the nerve to go and _die,_ like she wasn’t the only thing that Sabrina _had_.

She didn’t know, of course. Jayme Moriarty wasn’t that sort of woman. Sabrina wasn’t either, really, but she was loyal to her own and loved in the way she did. For her, that meant obedience. Deference. Loyalty.

Sabrina watched it happen. She did not react. That was not her way. But she noted the face of the woman who was standing in front of Jayme, _her_ Jayme, when Jayme pulled the trigger and blew out the back of her head. She etched that face into her mind, because Sabrina Moran wanted to remember the _bitch_ who was _there_ when the woman who'd given her her life back died. She felt a fierce burn of satisfaction when that whore jumped off the building and offed herself, though she faintly wished she’d gotten the chance to do it herself. Or better, cap off Holmes’s Jayme, her own other half. But there was no point doing it once that cunt was dead, so Sabrina packed away her rifle and disappeared.

But she did not forget that face.

So when four of her people died in a mysterious fire, she recognized the profile caught by the camera across the street, and almost had to laugh. Because _this?_ This was _fantastic._ This was perfect, in fact.

Because this was Sherlock Holmes, and Jayme Moriarty had taught her just how to burn her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from Raintears by Scala & Kolacny brothers.


	2. I Never Thought

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything changes.

It started with Irene.

Sherlock returned to their hotel room in London to find the lock shot off. She knew what she would find before she opened the door, but it still knocked the air out of her when she turned into the bathroom and found Irene bleeding out in the tub.

She was alive, but only just. When she heard the door, her head lolled over and she smiled. “I’m sorry, my love,” she whispered, “she’s got them.”

And with that, Irene Adler, known often as The Woman, expired.

Sherlock did not stay and mourn. She could not. There wasn’t time.

Just then, her phone chirped.

_your little girls gotten big_

Now Sherlock _really_ could not breathe. _Again._

_DO NOT TOUCH THEM. I'll  
give you me. It’s what you   
want, yes?_

_i want to give jayme moriarty  
the last word._

Sherlock did not finish reading the text. She was dialing Mycroft.

“Mycroft!”

“Sherlock? What--”

“Sabrina Moran. She’s going after them.”

“What do you need?”

“Get them out. I don’t care how, just get them out.”

\---

John picked up his phone.

“Hello, John.”

“Mycroft.”

“Look, something rather urgent’s come up. Could you pack a few things and meet the car out front? It should be there in about half an hour.”

John’s eyes moved from the face of the tall woman with the close-cropped blonde hair down the line of her arm to the gun pointed at his sleeping daughter.

“Actually, this isn’t a good time. Mind if I call you back?”

There was a moment of silence. “Ah.”

Click.

Sabrina jerked her head towards Rosie. “Hope she’s a sound sleeper.”

John’s jaw worked. “Look,” he started, but Sabrina held up a hand. “You can pick her up or I can. Now.” he stepped closer and leaned over, the gun inches from Rosie’s dark curls, “pick. Her. Up.”

Perhaps in another situation, John could have found some brilliant combination of maneuvers that would disarm and disable Moran before she could squeeze off a shot. But John had no idea how skilled Moran was or how willing she was to shoot a sleeping toddler, and that was not a risk he was willing to take.

So he bent, eased his hands under Rosie, lifted her up, wrapping her up in her favorite blanket as he did, and laid her against his shoulder.

Sabrina smiled. “There. Come on now. We’ve got an appointment, Johnny boy.”

\---

If she didn’t have its precise location engraved into her mind, Sherlock would barely have recognized 221 Baker Street. The wallpaper was different, the floors had been redone, and all the smells were new. But it was still the place where she had lived with her people, the closest to family she knew. To the heart of her, she felt this as _home._

So when she found the door wide open and heard a baby crying upstairs, she could hardly breathe for rage.

_My daughter. Crying. That’s_ my daughter crying _because someone is trying to hurt her._

She took the stairs two at a time and kicked the door to the flat open.

John was sitting at the kitchen table, eyes squeezed shut, with Rosie in his arms. Sherlock froze.

Sabrina Moran had a gun trained at the back of John’s head.

“Leave. Them. Be,” Sherlock snarled.

John gasped, but didn’t open his eyes. “That’s not--no...no. No.” He laughed uneasily. “Sher...Sherlock?”

“Don’t talk, John, don’t move, don’t breathe if you can manage it,” Sherlock ordered, pacing very, very slowly towards Moran.

“Got it. Not breathing.”

“I can make that permanent,” Sabrina said calmly.

Sherlock paused just outside the kitchen and showed her empty hands. “Look,” she said quickly, “you’ve got me. You don’t need to do this. You’ve got me now. You can let them go.”

The corners of Sabrina’s mouth jerked up in a terse, rueful smile. “Full of yourself, aren’t you? I don’t want _you,”_ she spat. “I want to show you what you _did._ What you did to _me.”_

Sherlock’s mouth went dry.

“Jayme Moriarty gave me _everything._ She _resurrected_ me. And you _killed_ her. No! Don’t!” she snarled. “Don’t say you didn’t. I was _there,_ across from the hospital, with a gun trained on Johnny boy here the whole time. You killed her as good as if you’d held the gun. And John here, he did for you what Jayme did for me, so, fair play, don’t you think?”

“I couldn’t have stopped her.”

“Bullshit.”

Moran cocked the gun. John gasped. Sherlock could not remember how.

“Now _you’re_ going to watch. Watch very, very closely.”

“Daddy,” Rosie whimpered.

John covered her eyes.

“Wait,” Sherlock said breathlessly. “One second, just...wait.”

Sabrina pushed the gun hard into John’s temple. John hissed sharply. Rosie tried to turn her head to see what was upsetting her father, but he tightened his hand against her face.

“Don’t look, sweetheart,” he whispered.

“Why?” Moran demanded. “Why should I wait for _you?”_

“Because you don’t need to take my daughter,” Sherlock said quickly. “You can let her go. You don’t need her, she’s unnecessary.” Even she was impressed with the evenness of her voice.

Sabrina sneered. “For fuck’s--fine. Whatever. I don’t care. Kids are less fun anyways.” She gestured at John with her free hand. “Take her the kid, but remember.” She tapped the gun against John’s shoulder. John, to his credit, did not flinch.

He rose slowly and opened his eyes, but kept them trained on the floor. In this manner he crossed the few steps to Sherlock, who held out her arms for Rosie.

“Careful,” John murmured. “Watch her blanket. You’ve got to keep her blankie on her or she pitches a fit to bring the walls down.”

Their eyes met.

Guns or no guns, John smiled even as his eyes welled up. “Good, this. A bit.”

Sherlock grinned. “A bit.” Rosie’s weight settled against her chest. She drew her very close, almost hugging. “Love you,” she said, not sure which one of them she was saying it to. Probably both.

John nodded and took the three long steps back towards Moran, who leveled the gun against his skull.

“No last words, I think,” she said.

“No,” Sherlock replied calmly. “I don’t think so.”

Moran whirled round at the sound of her voice and aimed the gun squarely at the bundle of Rosie curled against Sherlock’s shoulder.

There was a shot. The baby blanket fluttered.

Rosie jerked and let out a wail.

For a long moment, no one else moved.

Then John breathed a shaky sigh of relief. “We’ll have to buy her a new blanket or we’ll never sleep again.”

Sherlock laughed. “Patch up the bullet hole and call it a souvenir. My First Firefight.”

She lowered the gun. There was a small, scorched hole near the hem where Sherlock had fired the gun that John had folded between Rosie and her orange blanket.

John held out his arms. “Give her here.”

Sherlock picked her way over the body of Sabrina Moran and passed Rosie to John. Her fingers trembled only slightly with the burning effort to not grab him and kiss him, hard and long and never stop again. Their eyes met over Rosie’s curls and Sherlock knew he was imagining the same thing. She inhaled sharply, drawing in a ragged breath in an effort to calm herself.

“Shh, darling,” John soothed, sitting Rosie on his knee and cuddling her to his chest. “It’s all fine now. All fine.”

“Loud,” she whined. “Loud!”

John laughed. “Yes, very loud, but you were very brave. Such a brave girl. Daddy’s awfully proud. Now Rosie, love, do you want to meet someone?”

She shook her head and buried her face in her father’s shirt. He chuckled.

“Come on, love, it’s just for a moment, then we can all go back to sleep.” 

He turned her round. She paid no attention to the dead woman on the floor, focusing instead on the tall woman with the gun in her hand.

“I want you to meet your mummy,” John said, and there was the catch in his voice. “This is your mummy.”

A smile broke across Sherlock’s face. “Hello.”

Rosie’s brow furrowed and she shook her head. “No hello.”

She hid her face against John again.

That was when the police made their arrival.

When Lestrade burst through the door and saw Sherlock he had to sit down for several minutes. He buried his face in his hands and only looked up occasionally to stare at the figure who was definitely _Sherlock,_ if rather ginger, before shaking his head and dropping it back into his hands.

Sherlock was confused. “But _I_ called you.”

Lestrade laughed shakily. “You’re an idiot.”

Her brow furrowed momentarily as she searched for analogous situations in her personal experience. She found one. It smoothed. “Ah.”

John jerked his head towards the other detectives bending over Moran’s body. “We’d better go talk to this lot, Sherlock. They don’t look very patient.”

Sherlock and John spent the next two hours explaining the events of the past twelve months and ninety minutes. Rosie slept against John’s shoulder the whole time, an impressive feat considering the noise level. Sherlock kept as much of herself as possible in contact with John at all times, whether it was her fingers twined through his, her arm around his shoulders, her hand on his back or just a tight grip on his shirt.

They were smiling like idiots (a fact which did not endear them to many of the police, considering they had just shot a woman, but Lestrade understood) and kept glancing at each other as if they didn’t quite believe they were awake. Occasionally they would catch each other at it, and break out into broad grins and, on several occasions, outright laughter.

The coroner arrived just before the CSI team, which thankfully did not include Anderson. They were not so lucky when it came to Sally Donovan, who came in on the heels of the techs.

“So. Here you are,” she said, propping her hand on her hip.

“Right,” said John decisively. “I’m putting Rosie to bed. She’s had a rough night and I don’t fancy waking her up by decking a police sergeant.”

Sherlock watched him mount the stairs to what had once been his bedroom, years ago. When she was satisfied that John was well out of earshot, she turned back towards Donovan and folded her arms.

“How long?” she asked coolly.

Donovan blinked. “Excuse me?”

“How long?” Sherlock repeated. “How long did it take before you realized you were wrong? That you’d been _played?_ Days? Weeks? I know it was before tonight.”

Her jaw set. “I won’t apologize.”

Sherlock’s lip curled. “No, of course not! It wasn’t as if you had any inkling that _at all_ indicated that _you_ might be _wrong!_ You’re a professional, and you _certainly_ wouldn’t have allowed any personal prejudices to influence your decision to accuse and arrest a possible suspect!” The volume of her voice was climbing. She paused, took a deep breath, smoothed the front of her shirt and continued in a quieter, darker tone. “Now, Sally Donovan, I have two questions to pose to you. Firstly, do you think I could break the law and leave no trace so that I would never, ever be caught? And more importantly, _do you think I care whether you tiny, little people believe me to be clever?”_ Donovan opened her mouth and started in on an angry retort, but Sherlock held up a finger. “Think very, _very_ carefully before you answer, because if your answer is yes to either of those questions, if you think you’d never catch me, if you think I _don’t_ care, I hope you didn’t think so a year ago. Because if you did, if you believed those things, then you weren’t just _played_. You did it because you _wanted_ to. You drove me out of _my home_ and _my life_ and _stole my daughter_ from me because you had a _childish. Schoolgirl._ _GRUDGE!”_

Donovan was speechless. Sherlock pressed her knuckles to the bridge of her nose and gestured towards the door.

“Get out of my house.”

She didn’t move.

_“OUT!_ ”

She ducked her head and scampered.

Ten minutes later, Mycroft arrived, and he proved very useful in both verifying Sherlock’s story and clearing the flat of London’s best. It was three in the morning by the time Moran’s body was removed, all the evidence gathered and all the police cleared out. Lestrade had been particularly reluctant to leave, but eventually he conceded that perhaps he’d best come back tomorrow, with a long look at Sherlock.

When all was quiet, John turned on Sherlock and jabbed her in the chest with a finger. “You. Talk.”

She grimaced and gave a terse nod.

They crept down the hall into their room, trying to be as quiet as possible so as not to wake Rosie. John sat down on the edge of the bed and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Well then.”

Sherlock told him everything. Finding Irene, hunting Moriarty’s people, seven identities in twelve months, the fierce joy in slicing the life out of the people responsible for destroying hers, finding Irene bleeding out in their hotel room.

When she finished, she knelt on the floor in front of John and laid her hands on his knees. “That’s it,” she said at last. “Everything.”

John punched her in the shoulder. She took the hit with a small wince.

“Over a year, Sherlock,” he hissed.

“One year, four months and six days,” she corrected quietly.

He punched her again, but not so hard. “That’s for not telling me.”

Then he had his hands around her again like she’d been dreaming about for months and they were kissing. It made her want to say so many things. _I’ve missed you so much. I couldn’t sleep for days after because I wasn’t used to sleeping alone anymore. I’m sorry I cut my hair off, I know you loved it. I loved you loving it. I love you._ But speaking would have necessitated stopping the kissing, which they were both loathe to do.

John took her trembling body, wrapped it up in his and breathed comforts into her mouth until she stilled and both their faces were damp with tears.

“I checked your blog every day and read every post like it was a letter to me.”

“They were. Every photograph, every video. It was the best I could do.”

“It was _marvelous._ ”

“My therapist thought I’ve got the worst case of denial she’s ever seen.”

“You’re still seeing her? Surely you’re joking.”

“Not for, oh, about a year now.”

“You never suspected I might really--”

“More than suspected. You had me fooled cold.”

“And then?”

“Have you not been on the internet at all?”

“She wouldn’t look at me, John.”

Sherlock looked crestfallen.

“She wouldn’t look at me.”

“All she’s seen are photographs, and you don’t look much like the photos right now. Ginger suits you, by the by, though I do miss the old hair.”

“She _wouldn’t look at me._ ”

John pulled her up and kissed her forehead. “Hey,” he said softly, “take it easy. Give her a bit. She’s had an awful shock.”

Sherlock chuckled unsteadily. “Yeah.” She wiped her face.

John rubbed her shoulder in small circles. “Come on, you moron. We’re going to bed.”

She allowed herself to be led to the bed and stripped down to her underwear, and curled up under the sheets. John laid down beside her. She immediately rolled over and wound her limbs around him as tightly she could physically manage.

“Easy,” John said again. “We’ve got a while.”

She was silent for a long time. It was so long that John thought she had fallen asleep, until he feathered a kiss against her forehead and she hummed contentedly.

“You’re still worried.”

“No.”

“Stop it.”

“Her first word was ‘daddy.’”

John quieted, because he knew what was happening now, and it had to.

“That’s standard, of course. Infants’ first word is always their caregiver. Most parents discount that and what they call their child’s first word is actually their second. By that reckoning, her first word was ‘read’ and she was eleven months old. She crawled at eight months, took her first steps at thirteen. I read it all, John. She’s perfect. Everything I wanted.” Sherlock tucked her head into John’s shoulder. “And she’s not mine anymore.”

“No. No, Sherlock, of course she’s yours.”

“She won’t have me.”

“She’s upset and confused and all of _eighteen months old_. I’m telling you, she’ll come round.”

“It’ll never be the same, John. I’ll never...I’ll never be her mother now. Not really.”

“Oy!” He tapped her under the chin and tipped her face towards him. “Who’s spent the last year chasing her around? Who’s been telling her stories about you and showing her pictures and listening to her ask where you are? She wishes you good night before she goes to bed. Kisses your picture and says it. ‘Night, teddy, Night, Daddy. Night, Mummy.’ Every single night. So before you start panicking, give her _time._ All right?”

Sherlock turned over. “Letting her cultivate wild fantasies,” she said at last, voice muffled by her pillow. “You’ll have her going to church.”

John snorted. “Not bloody likely. We did go on Christmas Eve though. Just for tradition’s sake.”

“You _didn’t_ have Santa Claus.”

“Ah, wrong. We agreed. No Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny, Boogieman, none of that. But Santa Claus.”

She muttered something about idolatrous traditions and totems.

“Good night, Sherlock. We’re having Molly over tomorrow.”

Sherlock groaned. “No more idiots.”

“Don’t be rude. You owe her.”

Silence.

“You’re not asleep.”

Still silence.

“Fine. Good night, Sherlock.”

Curled up in her blanket and her face turned to the wall, she smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from Christina Perri's "Arms."


	3. Is Okay Good?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The next morning, John woke to Sherlock’s mouth on his neck for the first time in a year.

The next morning, John woke to Sherlock’s mouth on his neck for the first time in a year.

“Oh,” he sighed. “Yes. That’s good. Very good.”

“Do you know how long it’s been since we had sex?”

“A very long--mm--time.”

“One year,” a kiss at his throat, “four months,” the hollow between his neck and chest, “one week,” his collarbone, “and two days.”

“So, a very long time,” John said breathlessly.

The baby monitor crackled. Rosie, on the other end, began to fuss.

Sherlock was off John, out of bed and rummaging about the room for her dressing-gown in an instant. “Thank God, her vocalizations haven’t changed too much. She’s hungry, requires physical comforting--where is my--”

“Back half of the closet,” said John, still on his back and trying to shake the sense back into himself.

“Right. Get up. I require your assistance.” She swung the blue silk robe over her shoulders, tied it round the middle, and dragged John up by his arm.

“Oh, I’m not done yet,” he groaned, grabbing for his own bathrobe as Sherlock dragged him up the stairs.

Rosie was standing upright in her crib, banging on the bars. She quieted as soon as she saw John, but kept up the pathetic lip-twitch until he scooped her up.

“Morning sweetheart,” he said, and tapped her nose.

She hiccuped. “Moning.”

“R’s are difficult,” John said to Sherlock.

Rosie realized that she and her father were not alone and focused intently on Sherlock. Sherlock shifted uneasily.

“Er, hello,” she said.

“Hi,” Rosie said warily.

She gave a little wriggle. John set her down, and she toddled over to Sherlock and grabbed her knee.

“Hungy,” she declared, bouncing up and down.

John grinned. “She wants you to carry her downstairs.”

Sherlock looked from John to Rosie and back at John. “I--”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” said John, scooped up Rosie and plopped her into Sherlock’s arms.

Sherlock held Rosie at arm’s length for a moment, feeling her out. Rosie sniffed.

“Hungy,” she repeated, like she doubted Sherlock’s intelligence.

John snorted. Sherlock glared at him. “I--sorry. It’s just--her when she makes that face, it reminds me of you, and, well, she’s making it _at_ you, and it’s--yes. Wow you look alike.”

Sherlock studied Rosie’s features and nodded decisively. “Yes.”

Rosie put her hand over Sherlock’s face. “Hung-gy,” she said very slowly.

Breakfast was an experience. Rosie, who was normally a very neat eater, decided that the best location for her milk was on John’s bathrobe and refused to eat anything unless John physically placed it in her hand.

“Here she is, her royal highness,” John muttered, dabbing at the milk on his robe with a paper towel. “I swear she’s not normally like this.”

“Her schedule’s been thrown off,” Sherlock said round a mouthful of porridge. “She’s acting out.”

“Well she’d better stop, because Molly’s just texted me to say she can’t come over and I really do need to run to the shop without an extra ten fingers grabbing at everything on the shelves, so you’ll be watching her while I’m out.”

“I--John--what--”

“Ah, see, there you are. I like you like that,” he said, chewing. “When I’ve done something that surprises you.”

Sherlock scowled.

_Perhaps it was a mistake after all,_ John mused later, and then thought _I’d better buy an extra quart of milk; there’s an extra mouth in the house drinking it_ , and felt very warm. They weren’t familiar with each other yet, and Rosie was very routine-oriented and tended to misbehave when anything went not as planned.

_Oh. Yes. Yes, she does. That’s an understatement, in fact. Bit of a massive one._

So it was with great trepidation that John mounted the stairs, groceries in hand, expecting to come home to the biggest toddler tantrum he had yet seen. He elbowed open the door.

Sherlock was in her leather chair with Rosie fast asleep. “Le Petit Prince” was on the floor nearby. Sherlock was stroking Rosie’s hair and looking rapt.

“Tell Mycroft I’ve taken over the French,” she whispered.

“Why are we whispering?”

“Obvious.”

“Of course.”

“She calls me Maman. Not Mum though, nor Mummy. But that’s a start. Yes?”

John smiled. “Yes.”

Later, Rosie woke up from her nap, which was not part of her usual schedule, and fits were thrown like to raise the dead. But they got her into bed at a reasonable hour, and when she said her good nights she said the third one to Sherlock and gave her a shy kiss on the cheek. John wished more than anything that he’d had a camera on hand just then, to prove forever that Sherlock Holmes could not only be surprised, but be _pleasantly_ so.

When they crawled into bed two hours later, Sherlock was still smiling.

“Today was splendid,” she declared. “Marvelous.”

“Miraculous,” John said softly.

“Mmm.”

Then Sherlock was reaching up under John’s shirt, and she was sliding it up over his head and placing his hands where they absolutely _needed_ to be _right now_ and kissing him slowly and deeply, and everything was soft lips and sighs and hot breaths on bare skin.

“You love me,” she whispered.

“I was so afraid,” he murmured, “so afraid...I’d never hear that again. Hear you.”

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and rocked gently against him. She had no words for what she felt, but she had always been better at showing than telling, so she kissed him again and canted the length of her body up against John’s.

They spent a very long time just touching each other and tasting, feeling that they were _really there,_ that this was _real,_ but then Sherlock made a high, desperate sound and they simultaneously realized they needed to be _closer,_ and that was good. Exactly what they needed, in fact.

“Oh, that’s good,” she sighed. “Oh, God, love, move.”

He did. She gasped and kissed him again, so hard it was like drowning.

“Say it back to me,” she begged only a short time later, head tipped back and arms tight and desperate around John’s back. “Please, John, I need you to say it back to me.”

He squeezed his eyes shut so he could pretend it was sweat at the corners of his eyes and not tears. “I can’t. I can’t, not yet.”

“You _can.”_

“You...love me.”

“Yes,” she breathed, and made a sound like she was dying and glad of it, and John’s vision went white as he came.

Afterwards, they curled up facing each other, hands and feet and knees all tangled together, eyes heavy, sleepy and fucked-out.

“That was good,” said Sherlock drowsily.

“Yes.” John kissed her forehead. “We’ve got this.”

Sherlock smiled. “Yes. We do.”


	4. Happiness Hit Her

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John never expected their daughter to be ordinary.

John never expected their daughter to be ordinary. He hoped for functional, for happy, for self-satisfied, but prepared for utter madness, which wasn’t a bad way to raise a child, when he thought about it.

It wasn’t that he never wished for a slightly saner life for Rosie. Never for himself, of course, but sometimes, when he came home to find his partner and his five-year-old jointly dissecting a chicken on the kitchen table, or any of the times John had to inform Rosie that Mummy would miss dinner because she’d been beaten and stuffed into a car boot for rather a long time and Uncle Greg had insisted she at least set foot in the A&E, he wondered if maybe this wasn’t the best environment to bring up a child in.

Rosie, however, defied all expectations and rose magnificently to every occasion. She was a bright child, almost frighteningly so, and empathetic almost to the point of losing her sense of self. When she learned that meat came from animals, she cried for half an hour and could not be convinced to eat so much as a chicken nugget until Sherlock sat her down and won her over with a description of human dietary requirements and humane farming practices. She was six at the time.

When Rosie was five, she was kidnapped and thrown into a lake. This was particularly alarming to her parents as she had not entirely learned how to swim yet. Sherlock dragged her out and spent five terrible minutes giving her mouth-to-mouth before she finally coughed up a great deal of water just as the ambulance arrived. Later in the hospital, when she was awake and alert, she wanted to know what happened.

“I couldn’t breathe,” she said slowly, when Sherlock had explained, “so Mummy breathed for me?”

Sherlock nodded. “Yes. I did.”

“Will it ever happen again?”

“God-- _no,”_ said John.

“I don’t want it to,” said Sherlock, because she did not believe in lying. “Your father and I will do everything we can to make sure it never happens again.”

Rosie nodded. This seemed to be a satisfactory answer. “And if Daddy stops breathing, you’ll breathe for Daddy?”

“That’s right.”

“Who breathes for you?”

“Your father.”

“What if he’s gone? What if you need to breathe for Daddy and _you’re_ gone?”

Sherlock opened her mouth, shut it, and shot John an imploring look.

Rosie clapped her hands together. “Can I breathe for you?”

Sherlock frowned thoughtfully.

“Sherlock--” John started.

“There are cases,” she pointed out. “Children younger and far less capable saving siblings who fell into the family pool, primary schoolers correctly performing the Heimlich on choking classmates. And besides, it’s not like learning it will do her any _harm.”_

That was how John found himself teaching CPR to his five-year-old on her most lifelike dolly and explaining exactly in which situations it would be necessary. It was one of many things Rosie learned that John thought useful while fervently hoping she never actually had to use them.

There were the self-defense maneuvers Sherlock taught her when she was seven, derived from that obscure Japanese martial art she practiced, that were put to good and frequent use on kidnappers who thought the famous Sherlock Holmes’s only daughter would be an easy target. There were the marksmanship lessons in the firing range at New Scotland Yard where John walked a gangly, twelve-year-old Rosie through the proper use of firearms. Sherlock hovered nearby until Rosie threw a small fit and claimed her mother’s staring was putting her off. The CPR did come into play when Rosie was ten and John was strangled by a masked assailant for a few seconds too long. When he opened his eyes in the hospital room, Rosie and Sherlock were watching him with identical proud grins.

“The doctors said I did it correctly,” said Rosie.

“She did it _fantastically,”_ Sherlock proclaimed, and kissed Rosie on the top of her head.

“Well done you,” John croaked.

There were also more mundane lessons, the kinds of things anyone’s child might pick up. After the lake incident, swimming lessons were scheduled posthaste. Rosie showed absolutely no interest in the violin, which disappointed Sherlock, but became infatuated with the piano. An upright grand took up residence in the main room of 221B, which John regretted only on occasion. Rosie had negative interest in most mainstream sports, though she took up fencing when she was thirteen and rather enjoyed it.

Neither John nor Sherlock ever explained the facts of life to Rosie. Her school had a very detailed set of encyclopedias, and she had started reading through them when she’d read everything she cared about in the library.

She never needed needling about doing her homework. She had a few friends, other slightly odd children, and didn’t seem to stand out enough to draw bullies, for which John was thankful. He feared for the child who sent Sherlock’s daughter home in tears. A few times she got into trouble with teachers, usually when she decided she knew more than they did. Sherlock would stay determinedly silent on such matters and leave it to John to convince her that no, it is not polite to ask if you can teach the class instead.

No, ordinary was out of the question, but by and large Rosie did alright, and John and Sherlock did too. There were some dreadful bits. After all, she was much like her mother, and though she cared infinitely more about what other people thought of her she couldn’t always figure out the right thing to _say_. Sometimes she would get very quiet, sensing she’d done something wrong, and John could practically hear her shouting at herself in her head. There was the morning two weeks after Rosie started secondary school when her uniform sleeve caught on a fork in the dish drainer and tore open, baring a line of neat red lines on the inside of her arm in varying stages of healing.

John’s whole body seized up, and he very calmly asked her what had happened.

Rosie tugged her blazer on, refusing to meet his eyes. “Makes things quiet,” she mumbled.

Sherlock just sighed and squeezed her eyes shut.

They went out after school that day and didn’t come home for hours. When they finally stomped up the stairs a little after midnight, they were laughing like idiots and smelled like a rotting vegetable patch.

_“La prochaine fois, je tiens à rendre le jeu,”_ Rosie was saying breathlessly.

Sherlock grinned. _“Vous pensez que vous pouvez ma battre?”_

_“Je peux venir près!”_

“Hello,” said John, waving. “Dad here, not speaking French, wondering what the hell is going on?”

“Nothing!” Rosie chirped, trying and failing to look as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth and skipping up the stairs to her room.

John eyed Sherlock, who shrugged.

“I fixed it,” she said simply.

“Fixed--”

“Sometimes,” she said, “my mind gets very loud. When I was younger, I couldn’t...focus it. It was...difficult.”

John nodded and bit his lip. “So, that’s what happened? Rosie’s mind got...loud?”

“That’s not the perfect word for it, but more or less.”

“And you can’t quiet it.”

“No. Not without resorting to socially unacceptable measures.”

“So you have to focus it.”

“Yes.”

“And you do that with your crimesolving.”

“Yes.”

“How did you do it with Rosie?”

Sherlock smirked. “I made her a problem.”

“You--” John winced. “Will I like the problem?”

Sherlock considered. “Probably not.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Did anyone get hurt?”

“No.”

“Did you do anything illegal?”

“You might as well ask--”

_“Seriously_ illegal?”

A huff. “No.”

“Is there any chance either of you are going to be arrested?”

A scoff.

“All right, silly question.”

“Yes. Showering now.”

There was Rosie’s idea of coming out of the closet to her parents, which happened when she was thirteen. John made a brief crack about boys and was met with scoffs from both the women of the household.

“Really, Dad?” said Rosie. “Boys, not really happening. I’m pretty much gay, if you hadn’t picked that up by now.”

“About time he came round,” said Sherlock from behind a newspaper.

“He was just in a bit of denial,” said Rosie around a mouthful of bagel.

 There was the particularly uncomfortable evening when Rosie came home from her girlfriend’s house five minutes after her poorly-enforced curfew, beaming, and Sherlock, sharp-eyed, looked her over and scowled.

_“Nous avons passé un bon moment?”_ she asked evenly.

Rosie shot her a terrible look. _“Tais-toi, Mére.”_

John didn’t know what clued Sherlock in, but the mussed hair, rumpled clothes and flushed face told him enough to know he did _not_ want to know.

There was the first time Rosie was dumped, after which Sherlock took her to her first crime scene. There was the girl at her school who’d always a tremendous bitch to her who died in a car accident, and Rosie cried for an hour because she was glad. There was the frequent pleading to take in such-and-such animal she’d found on the Internet who didn’t have a home, to which John only caved three times, resulting in two cats and a hedgehog.

There was Rosie, twelve, presenting her parents with a presentation on why they should get legally married. John laughed, but Sherlock turned to him with a thoughtful look.

“She’s got a point.”

John and Sherlock kept their names, but Rosie hyphenated hers after a brief debate between Holmes-Watson and Watson-Holmes.

There were dolls, teddies and white Mary Janes and there were vans with tinted windows, kidnap experts from Columbia and near-drownings. There were schoolbooks and there were dissected sharks on the kitchen counter. There were teary calls at midnight after breakups and calm text messages reading _“Abandoned warehouse in Chiswick. WIndows blacked out. Within 1k of a pastry factory. RWH”_

It was mad. Utterly, completely mad. And none of them would have wished it any other way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all folks! There's a one-shot from Rosie's POV that I'll probably post, and maybe a few outtakes. But that's more or less the last of it. For your listening pleasure, I recommend putting on Christina Perri's "Arms" and curling up with your happy feels rather than the Reichenbach ones we must normally deal with. All my loving to all of you!

**Author's Note:**

> But you snatched your lips away  
> from our bitterest kiss.  
> You invoked another place  
> than the dismal exile of this.  
> You said, ‘When we meet again,  
> in the shadow of olive-trees,  
> we shall kiss, in a love without pain,  
> under cloudless infinities.’  
> -Alexander Pushkin


End file.
